Process Improvement 101


You have had a number of people pass through your company with brilliant suggestions on how to fix your business. IT has their own ideas; Six Sigma brings their own methods, Sales promises new records   and all those new Vice Presidents you hire?  They all have plenty of years of experience, probably advanced degrees and are ready to save your Supply Chain or S&OP …or even the world! The reality is that there are no shortcuts to...

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In one of my latest articles – “SAP Supply Chain Monitoring Best Practises” I spoke about a Supply Chain Executive’s winning formula. Included in that winning formula is #2 Maintain strategic focus Define Key Initiatives & Metrics. I would highly recommend re-reading that article as this one builds on it. What astonishes me is how many companies do not use standard SAP reporting to measure key metrics. SAP provides up to 300...

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A Supply Chain Executive’s  winning formula is: Support the CEO’s vision and provide a Supply Chain vision Maintain a strategic focus including: Help create and support a Focused Business Plan Define Key Initiatives & metrics All of the above easily remembered and communicated Create  an A+ team Make sure accountability is in place Simplify and keep on simplifying Let’s first look at accountability and simplifying. In...

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The nerds are taking over the world! In case you haven’t noticed the IT nerds are talking over the world. Marc Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire on the planet, Bill Gates has been one the richest people in the world for as long as I can remember. More and more App creators are running billion dollar companies.  IT is now embedded in not only our lives but everything a corporation does from running business processes, developing...

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“Move a thousand people forward a foot at a time, rather than moving one person forward by a thousand feet” In 2007, when JetBlue left hundreds of passengers stranded on nine planes for over ten hours during an ice storm, they knew they had to make colossal business changes. They made those changes by taking a day to map out their bad weather operations on Post-It notes, identifying one thousand pain points. That’s right… One...

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I’ve worked on many major projects and here are the best lessons learned. Don’t budget so many projects in the New Year that you can’t deliver them. I worked at one pharmaceutical company and there were a limited amount of projects driven by a Project Officer and designed to fit the team’s work throughout the year. One project focused on streamlining the SAP Planning and Procurement exception messages. This one project contributed to...

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